VARIOUS SEALS 195 



the Grey Seal (Halichcerus grypus) of the North Atlantic, 

 which is well known on the North British coasts. It is 

 a larger animal than the last named, measuring as much 

 as eight feet in length and attaining a weight of four 

 hundred pounds. It is less gregarious than many of its 

 cousins, usually being met with only in pairs. 



The Bladder Nose, or Crested Seal (Cystophora cristata), 

 is the largest, fiercest, and most dangerous of the northern 

 Seals. In harpooning it, the Eskimo often finds the 

 animal turn upon him to upset the frail kayak in which 

 he is seated. Probably the hardy Northman considers the 

 capture well worth th/ risk entailed, for two hundred 

 pounds of flesh and over a hundred pounds of blubber 

 form no mean addition to a scanty larder. The crest 

 of the animal is neither a kind of armour plate to pro- 

 tect it against wounds, nor a bladder to give increased 

 buoyancy, as was once supposed ; it is nothing but an 

 enlargement of the nasal passages. 



The Greenland Seal (Phoca grcenlandica) ranges along 

 almost the whole of the Arctic coasts. It is an animal 

 that has given rise to much confusion. Not only do 

 the males and females differ very considerably in size 

 and colouring, but as they grow to maturity they undergo 

 marked changes that have gained for the same species 

 a great variety of names, each really applicable to the Seal 

 only at some particular period in its existence, e.g., Ice 

 Seal, Saddle Back, White Coat, Blue Side, and Harp 

 Seal. 



The animal is invaluable to the Eskimos, and at one 

 time in Danish Greenland an annual catch of nearly forty 

 thousand was nothing uncommon. From the crow's- 

 nest of a British sealing vessel could sometimes be seen 

 half a million seals, 'literally covering the frozen waste 

 as far as the eye can reach with the aid of a telescope.' 

 A party from one vessel has caught as many as twelve 

 thousand Seals in a day. Fortunately for the species, 

 however, Hair-sealing for various reasons has ceased 

 to be so profitable as was once the case, and in all proba- 

 bility the Seal is as numerous as ever it was when the 

 annual catch ran into hundreds of thousands. 



